


They Say He was a Soldier, From the Great Patriotic War

by Alex51324



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Genre: Food, Gen, winter soldier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-02-04 10:57:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1776622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alex51324/pseuds/Alex51324
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some UNCLE agents are discussing rumors of a terrifying Russian assassin with a metal arm.  Illya met him once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Say He was a Soldier, From the Great Patriotic War

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Говорят, он был солдатом Великой Отечественной](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5321273) by [Xetta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xetta/pseuds/Xetta)



> I prompted this on the kinkmeme and then ended up writing it:
> 
> The Winter Solider and Illya Kuryakin are both frequently portrayed as having ties to the KGB. So maybe they met?
> 
> I'd be interested in anything involving WS and IK, but I'd really like it if their encounter is a bright spot in WS's presumably-bleak existence. Maybe there's sex, or food, or tending of wounds, I dunno--just, Illya,WS, and something pleasant happening.
> 
> Additional ideas:
> 
> \-- Illya is a little, scrappy, blond guy. That rings a very distant bell with WS.
> 
> \--I'm picturing them meeting before Illya joins UNCLE, since that's when he was presumably working for the KGB.

When the discussion turned to the Winter Soldier—a terrifying Russian assassin with a metal arm—Illya slipped away from the group. For hours now, the agents had been telling ghost stories—the intelligence community’s myths and legends. Napoleon and Illya had both been amused to hear an agent they didn’t know reciting as true a story the two of them had made up as a prank. 

Now, though…Napoleon waited just long enough for his departure not to raise any questions, and followed Illya back up to their room. “I hope that didn’t bother you,” he said awkwardly. “The—Russian boogeyman stuff.” Illya was, at that point, UNCLE’s only Soviet agent. He was well-liked by those who knew him, and _everyone_ respected his reputation for competence…but it still made a distance, between him and the rest of the organization. Illya’s loyalty was first to UNCLE, and second to his country, same as any other agent—but no one ever entirely forgot that his country was the Red Menace. 

“It’s fine,” Illya said, with a slight smile. “In Russia, they say that he was a soldier from the Great Patriotic War. They say that he is Russia’s answer to Captain America. They say that he’s kept on ice between missions, so he’ll always be ready to serve the motherland when we need him.” 

It made sense, Napoleon supposed, that the Russian spook community would see him…differently. But Illya’s next remark shocked Napoleon to the core. 

“I met him once.” 

“Really?”

“Hm,” Illya said, his eyes going distant.

#

It had been in his early days as a young rising star in the KGB. The mission was…well, the mission was classified. The Soldier and his handler, a man called Kubasov, joined them from another agency. Which one, Illya never knew, because his own superior wouldn’t name it. He just turned his head, spat, and made signs against the evil eye, if he had to refer to it at all. 

The Soldier was tall and broad-shouldered. He wore black body armor, and yes, his arm was made of metal. The lower part of his face was covered with a mask—it resembled some sort of respirator—and he wore goggles over his eyes. He had…carried out the mission…with efficiency and grace. And total silence, apart from gunfire and the clicking and whirring of his metal arm. 

He padded like a wolfhound at Kubasov’s heels, to the safe house where they were to spend the night, and stood impassively as Kubasov and Ovchinin—Illya’s superior—made plans to go out and seek what this village had to offer in the way of recreation. Ovchinin’s distaste for the agency of the evil eye apparently did not extend to passing up the chance for vodka and whores. 

“Your boy,” Kubasov said, jerking his head in Illya’s direction. “He can stay with the Asset, yes?”

Illya hadn’t exactly been looking forward to drinking and whoring with the other three, but that prospect was even more alarming. But Ovchinin had agreed.

“He’s no trouble,” Kubasov said. “He has a screw loose, from the ice,” he explained, pointing at his head. “Just make sure he eats, and doesn’t wander off.” He gave Illya a thump on the shoulder that made him stagger, and the Soldier an identical thump that didn’t rock him at all, and the two older agents left. 

“Well,” Illya said, once the door had closed behind them. “Shall we see what there is to eat?” 

The Soldier didn’t answer, but followed Illya, wordlessly, into the safe house’s kitchen. No sooner had they arrived, but the lights cut out. This was a poor quarter—workers lived here, not Party officials. They probably only had electricity a few hours each day. Fortunately, Illya was able to find an oil lamp, and the stove ran on bottled gas. 

After Illya had lit the lamp, the Soldier took off his goggles. He sat, quietly, at the table, and folded his hands. Profoundly unsettled, Illya turned his attention to the cupboards. This safe-house was better stocked than some; he found potatoes and onions, and a cut-end of bacon to fry them with. There was flour, and tinned milk, and a couple of wrinkled apples. At the back of one cupboard, he found a half-bottle of some noxious cinnamon liqueur, which some prior occupant had apparently not wanted to be drunk badly enough to drink. “We’ll have a feast,” Illya pronounced. He was a good cook. Some of the others mocked him for it, but he liked to eat well. 

He set the bacon to frying in a pan, and scrubbed and chopped the potatoes and onions. He hesitated over the apples—they could be good fried in with the root vegetables, but he had another idea. As the potatoes fried, he mixed pancake batter, adding in a small amount of precious, real sugar. He cooked the pancakes, one at a time, in another frying pan. Some of the delicate discs tore as he flipped them, or as he removed them to a plate, but that was all right. He folded them into messy triangles—rolling them up would be more elegant, but they were soldiers here, and hungry. Folding them was quicker. 

When he had cooked all the pancake batter, the potatoes were nearly done. He gave them a stir and left them to crisp a few more minutes while he chopped the apples. There was a bit of butter, too—or at least, something that resembled butter—so he put that in the pancake pan to melt, then added the apples, more sugar, and—after a moment’s hesitation—a generous splash of the liqueur. “We’ll hope that doesn’t ruin it,” he said to the Soldier. 

Dishing up the potatoes, he took them to the table. The Soldier took off his mask. Under it, his face was stubbled, but unlined. He couldn’t possibly be much older than Illya himself. 

The story about him being a veteran of the Great Patriotic War must have been just that—a story. Perhaps all of it—his silence, his mask—was just a big joke the older men were playing on their wet-behind-the-ears junior. 

Feeling more relaxed, Illya said, “There’s only tea to drink, unless you want this.” He put the bottle of liqueur on the table. 

The Soldier glanced at it, but said nothing. When Illya sat down, he began to eat. 

And ate, and ate. Illya had cooked all the potatoes there were—he knew from experience that Ovchinin was far easier to deal with, the next morning, if he’d had something to soak up his vodka. But apparently the other two were going to have to make do with bread, if they didn’t find something better while they were out, because between them, Illya and the Soldier polished off the whole pan. And for once, Illya’s was the smaller share, though he had all he wanted. 

While they ate, the apples and liqueur had cooked down into a nice, rich-smelling sauce. He put the folded pancakes in it, just long enough to heat them through, then took the pan to the table. “Time for dessert.” There were eight pancakes, and Illya had thought about putting some aside for the others—Ovchinin would be angry, if he found out that the larder had had such luxuries, and Illya had used them all up—but if the Soldier really was a hero of the Great Patriotic War, he deserved the best. 

And if he wasn’t, Illya wasn’t to blame for taking his superior at his word. He dished up four pancakes for each of them, along with more tea. Cooking had softened the taste of the liqueur, as Illya had hoped it would. He hummed with pleasure as he ate. 

The Soldier ate slowly, frowning down at his plate. “This,” he said after he had eaten the last pancake. His voice sounded rusty from disuse, and there was a trace of an accent, something Illya couldn’t identify. 

“Yes?”

“It’s good.” 

He sounded surprised by that. Or maybe confused. That was what his expression looked like—confused, lost, and young. Illya wondered what he really was—some sort of oligiphrenic savant, who understood killing but nothing else? “I’m glad you like it,” he said. 

The Soldier stood, picking up his plate. His movement caught, as if something hurt him, but he hadn’t been injured on the mission—on the mission, he had moved like nothing had ever or could ever hurt him at all. He took his plate to the sink, but after he’d put it down, he unbuckled the front of his uniform and tugged it aside, peering down at his side. There, over his ribs, was a line of stitches, but no wound that Illya could see.   
“What happened there?” Illya asked. 

The Soldier shook his head. “They must have forgotten to take them out.” 

That answer just raised more questions, as far as Illya was concerned. He’d had enough wounds stitched himself to know how they felt as they healed. After a point, the itching and pulling of the stitches themselves was worse than the wound. It wasn’t something you forgot about. “I can take them out, if you like,” he offered. “I’m not a medic, but I’ve taken my own out, more than once, when I could reach them.”

The Soldier nodded. “Yes.”

“I’ll go and see if we have such a thing as a first aid kit,” Illya said. “It’s much easier to remove stitches with scissors than a knife.” 

He found one, in the safe house’s bathroom. There wasn’t much in it—some bandages and a dried-up tube of ointment—but there was a pair of curved scissors, slightly rusty but sharp enough. He washed them at the sink and rinsed them with rubbing alcohol, just to be safe. 

When he returned to the kitchen, the Soldier was standing at the sink, shirtless, washing the dishes. The metal arm was attached much higher up than Illya would have guessed—his whole shoulder was metal, right up to the base of his neck. Some of that must have been plating over flesh, surely. It looked…welded on. “I found them,” Illya said, holding up the scissors. 

The Soldier looked over at him, nodded, and turned off the water. He sat back in his chair, and Illya crouched next to him, so the stitches were at eye level. Whatever wound they had treated was completely healed. “This might be a bit uncomfortable,” Illya said. “They should have been removed some time ago.” He was acutely aware that he was crouching just under the metal arm, which only a few hours ago he had seen—

Well, he had seen it do terrible things. 

“It’s fine,” the Soldier said. 

And indeed, he stayed perfectly still as Illya snipped and removed the stitches, not wincing or making a sound even when they tugged at his skin. Still, Illya was relieved to be finished, to be able to stand up and move away from the Soldier under the pretext of throwing away the removed stitches. The Soldier shrugged back into his uniform, but didn’t fasten it. 

Illya tore his eyes away from him and went to the sink, to finish with the dishes. As he washed them, the Soldier said, “Do I know you?”

“We met earlier today,” Illya said. 

“Not before?”

“No.” 

“There’s something familiar about you.” He shook his head. “I’ve got a screw loose,” he said, copying Kubasov’s gesture of touching his head. “From the ice.”

“My father served in the Great Patriotic War,” Illya suggested. “Perhaps you knew him.” He still wasn’t sure what to believe, about the Soldier.

“Perhaps,” the Soldier said. “Was he--” He made a gesture up and down Illya’s body, with his metal hand. “Like you?”

“I’m not sure. He was killed.” 

The Soldier didn’t say anything for a long time. When he did, it was, “I’m sorry.”

#

Illya shook himself, seeming to come back to the present, as he finished his story. It was completely different from the stories the others had told about the unstoppable killing machine known as the Winter Soldier, but somehow Napoleon thought it was more frightening for all that. 

“When the others came back—drunk as sailors on leave—and I reported to Kubasov, he clipped me on the ear and told me I was a stupid boy who should have been killed. The Soldier was always sedated for medical procedures, he said.” Illya shrugged. “I never saw him again, after the next morning. I’ve always wondered. What he really was.”

“But--” Napoleon shook his head. “You’re kidding, right?” He must be. Illya’s deadpan sense of humor was legendary. 

Illya grinned. “Yes, Polya, of course I am kidding.”


End file.
